Rescuers Save Puppy From Well & We Can’t Stop Crying

Pull the Kleenex close because this one is a tearjerker: Firefighters, miners, disaster relief teams, and high school students in Istanbul worked together to free a 4-month-old puppy trapped at the bottom of a 230-foot borehole.

While it's not known exactly how the Kangal pup found itself in the dicey predicament (pushed by a cat? coaxed by a tennis ball that bounced just beyond his grasp?), the saga actually started 10 days earlier when his whimpers echoed up to residents in a leafy area of the city's Beykoz district.

Early efforts to spring the canine were fruitless because of the well's depth and the narrow bottleneck at it's top, which prevented anyone from safely climbing down.

Rescue efforts intensified, according to Al-Monitor, when crews from Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), a government-run disaster relief agency best known for its work with earthquake victims, were brought in to help.

Thermal imaging subsequently confirmed that the dog, a beautiful woofer "with a black muzzle and big anxious eyes", was alive, alert, and a very good boy.

The story took another turn when crowds mushroomed around the rescue site; that was was followed by a spike in media reports.

Now dubbed Kuyu (Turkish for "well"), the brown Anatolian shepherd became a massive sensation on national TV and social platforms like Twitter, where a bevy of related hashtags — like #DirenKuyu ("resist well") and #yavrukopekbeykoz ("puppy dog of Beykoz") — trended daily.

As hopes for an extraction began to ebb, the story took another major turn: The country's Energy Minister, Berat Albayrak, dispatched an elite team from the Turkish Coal Institute to lend their expertise.

Building on an technique developed by a high school student, the squad "fashioned a lasso from a long steel coil through which they threaded a rubber hose". After a couple of attempts, they were able to lower the makeshift device over Kuyu's head (said to be napping at the time, because LOL) and lifted him to freedom.

A riotous celebration broke out when rescue crews finally pulled the beleaguered pooch to the top of the hole.